


Spooky Stuff

by Marmosette



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-18
Updated: 2012-02-18
Packaged: 2017-10-31 08:57:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/342241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marmosette/pseuds/Marmosette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mycroft ends up at a somewhat unusual crime scene with Greg, and some spooky stuff happens. Not even Mycroft is immune to some things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spooky Stuff

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Eva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eva/gifts).



“Mycroft, will you stop doing that?”

“Doing what?” came the languid response.

“I know when you’re poking the wall with your damned umbrella. You are not going to make me piss myself and go running back wailing about ghosts. I don’t know what the hell else you think you’re going to achieve.” 

“If I thought you were that witless, I would have stayed at the office.”  

“You didn’t know you’d end up in an antique mine turned into a bunker,” Greg answered, aiming his torch around the walls. 

“Didn’t I?”

Greg turned around and shone the torch into Mycroft’s face, making him flinch and raise a hand. “If you knew, then you could have bleedin’ well told me! I would have sent Anderson instead! He _loves_ this stuff.” Greg turned back to the wall. “Just hush up back there.”

 “Am I drowning out the sound of the imaginary friends?”

 _“Mycroft.”_   

 

Mycroft subsided into silence. Greg shuffled forward, past another pair of side rooms, one completely empty, one crammed full of abandoned office furniture. He paused for a long moment, convincing himself that the movement he thought he was seeing was due to the hand-held torch. “Okay, that’s the two rooms on the right,” he said. “Should be stairs after this next corner, then.”

 The concrete blocks of the corridor ended with a steel frame, and beyond was the raw mineshaft, which bent around to the left. “There should be another opening off to the right, past the corner, and then the stairs. Yeah?”

When there was no response, he sighed. “You’ve got your phone, you can see the map with that light.” Again, no response. “I’m not falling for this, you know.”

Greg was initially relieved when he finally heard Mycroft’s voice again, and proud of himself for not giving in and turning around with the torch just to find Mycroft smirking at him for having been spooked by his silence. But then,“This map is wrong,” Mycroft said.

“What’s wrong about it? How can it be wrong? It’s just the way he told us.” 

“Greg, come here. Look at it.” 

He turned around, aiming the torch at the simple piece of paper in Mycroft’s hands. “What’s wrong?” 

“Here.” Mycroft pointed. “That last room was supposed to be empty. All of the furniture was moved into the barracks, he said.”

“Then he hasn’t been down here in a while.”

Mycroft sighed impatiently. “Then why are we here? No, he was in this corridor when he heard it.” 

“So he’s down here all the time and he’s too familiar with it, and he didn’t notice. He probably walked past that room and didn’t even look.”

“He gives tours here, Greg. He would have to stop and look in the rooms as he took groups past.”

“Look, we’re not here to critique his cleaning staff for not getting permission to rearrange a few desks and chairs. Just come _on._ ” Greg took his arm and pulled him along, turning the torch back to the corridor ahead of them. “The chill is starting to sink into my bones.” 

“It isn’t that cold, really.” 

“Yep, that’s what I keep telling myself.” He held the torch as far forward as he could, aiming it around the bend. “How much can it possibly be costing him to operate this place, and yet he can’t afford to get a decent diagram of the place drawn to scale.” 

“Disorientation adds to the fear.”

 “Okay, there’s supposed to be a room on the left, yes?” Greg said, moving past the corner and looking around.

“On the right,” Mycroft corrected.

“What we have, though, is a room on the left.” 

Mycroft looked up, where Greg had the torch aimed at the edge of an opening on the left wall of the corridor, then back at the map. “Is there any point pretending this map is of any use whatsoever?” he asked, creasing it and sliding it into his pocket. “Ridiculous.” 

“Think you remember the way back?” Greg asked, moving slowly along the left-hand wall toward the opening. 

“There is no armed ghost in there waiting to shoot you,” Mycroft said, watching him. 

“Absolutely not,” Greg agreed absently. “But on the other hand, I have no idea what is in this room, as we’ve discovered the map is shit, his description of the place is shit, and this whole thing is feeling more and more like bollocks to me. Which either means I’m about to be knifed, or lay down and cry from boredom.”

 “I can think of far better uses for our time alone in the dark.” 

Greg glanced back at him and grinned briefly. “Cheers. Possibly not the most responsible way to behave, though. You’re not even really supposed to be here.”

“On the other hand, if you need to shut the place down on a pretext, having me on hand to tell the MOD certainly saves you some time. Would you like me to go in first?” he added, shifting his weight and folding his arms, watching Greg pausing next to the opening with his back to the wall. 

“No, it’s just…” Greg shook his head. “I just really don’t want to go in there. It feels creepy.”

Mycroft raised his eyebrows, reached out, and took the torch from Greg’s hand. He aimed it past Greg and into the room. “Nothing. Some kind of alcove on the back wall.” 

Greg closed his eyes briefly, swallowed, then stepped out into view of the room. Mycroft nudged his shoulder with the torch, and Greg accepted it back. “Okay. Right. So… where are the stairs?” Greg swung the torch around the room, then back out to the corridor. 

Mycroft shrugged. “Even if this place were a labyrinth, it takes more than that to disorient me. So the map is wrong. There will either be an exit, or we will go back to where we know there is one.”

“You’re really, absolutely certain you know exactly how to get back?” Greg asked, eyes wide, pinching at the air with two fingers, trying to convey precision and not anxiety, and not quite succeeding. 

“I won’t bore you with the actual measurements, but yes, I am absolutely certain. Now _can_ we get on?” 

“Right.” Greg took a deep breath, nodded, and strode into the room. It was reinforced with steel girders, but the walls and floor were earth and stone, with a low lip on the floor against the far wall, like a dais or stage. There was another ledge in the back wall about one meter up and two meters wide. Greg had assumed that it was the general idea of a tomb, with a niche carved into the wall for a body. But the ledge was actually simply a low wall, and behind it, there was a shaft. Greg whistled, aiming the torch first down, then up. “Air shaft,” he realized, seeing the night sky. “I thought this was supposed to be stairs, but, well, I guess it is a conenction to the surface.” He shrugged.

Mycroft leaned over next to him, looking up. “At least that particular mistake makes a kind of sense, unlike the rest.” He glanced down, then paused. “Shine the torch down there again?” 

Greg looked over at him, followed his gaze. Mycroft had his phone out again, aiming the light from the screen down into the darkness. It didn’t reach very far, spreading a diffuse glow across the walls, fading out about five meters down. “Why, did you see something?” Greg flicked the torch beam back down, tracking the walls of the shaft. “Good grief. How deep did they say this thing went?” 

“I don’t think he said.” Mycroft paused, then tilted his phone up. The screen had gone dark. 

“Can you bring that back?” Greg asked. “I think I could see something.”

 “I’m trying,” Mycroft muttered. “I think it’s dead.” 

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it’s off. Like the battery’s dead.”

“Trying to find a signal drained it?”

“Airplane mode.” 

“Then what the hell?” Greg said, exasperated. “It was fully charged!”

Mycroft gave him a look. There was enough reflected light from the torch that Greg hesitated. “So where’s your work phone?” he asked instead. 

Mycroft already had a second phone in his hand. “Appears dead as well.”

“I’ll try calling you,” Greg suggested. 

“No,” Mycroft said quickly. “Let’s not. If there’s some kind of interference here, perhaps it’s best not to risk draining yours as well.”

“But…you’re never supposed to switch that phone off,” Greg said, looking from the dark mobiles in Mycroft’s hands up to his face and back. “If Anthea can’t reach you…” 

“Again, Greg, it’s best not to. Finish up here, we’ll head back out, there are spare batteries in the car.”

“Of course there are,” Greg muttered, grinning. “Silly me.” 

They leaned down over the edge, and Greg held the torch out as far as he could. “Jesus. Hang on, are those rocks down there?”

“Hmm.” Mycroft’s hand reached out, covering Greg’s on the torch, nudging it slightly to one side. “Could be branches blown in.” 

“Yep, could be. Or could be rocks.”

 “They’re not,” Mycroft said flatly. “That’s just ridiculous.”

“Oi!” 

“It’s no reflection on you,” Mycroft retorted. “I thought it as well.”

“Then less of the head-slapping!” Greg straightened abruptly.

Mycroft took a step back. “Greg. What were you told happened tonight?” 

Greg stared at him, annoyed, rubbing his head. “That was completely uncalled for.”

“Young woman, just started working here…?” Mycroft prompted. 

“Yeah, yeah. It was her first shift tonight, said she’d dropped something, they heard her go back, then a thump and a scream, she was near the stairs, they couldn’t find her.” 

“Yes. And these stairs…?” 

“Supposed to be near - hang on.” Greg stopped. “Right around here, but we just saw there weren’t any stairs.” 

“Let’s go look again.” Mycroft tilted his head toward the corridor, taking Greg’s arm.

“Really, though, you shouldn’t have slapped me. I almost dropped the torch, and that would not have been fun.”

“Greg, I did not slap you,” Mycroft said, testy. “When have you ever known me to slap anyone? Even Sherlock.”

“You are not making me laugh right now.” 

“Nor am I trying to. Now, torch.” Mycroft reached for his hand impatiently, aiming the torch to the left, down the dead-end of corridor they’d faced when they first entered the room. There was a door on the right.

“That… is that locked?” Greg asked, even as they both moved toward it.

“If …no. No, it won’t be.”

“What makes you so sure?” Greg asked, his hand on the thumb-lever, but without trying it. 

“Well, is it?” Mycroft asked, impatient.

Greg tried. It stuck a bit, but then things clanked into place, and he yanked the door open.

“We’re leaving,” he said, as if answering a question.

“Of course,” Mycroft snapped, shooing him up the stairs.

“But we could just get your batteries from the car,” Greg suggested, pausing on the last step. 

“The map was wrong,” Mycroft said, in the kind of voice usually used by Sherlock at a crime scene when Lestrade asked a question. “It was wrong, and more wrong the farther we went. Furniture moved, my phone batteries both drained, then you’re bending over a mine shaft, nearly drop the torch because you think I reached over and slapped you? My hand was on the torch, the same as yours. I could not possibly have reached your head. And now you need to get out of my way, confirm that your phone’s battery is dead too, and let me get to the car so you can phone in the skeleton back there. It may be a very long time ago, but there must be a reason no one’s ever removed the body.” Mycroft brushed past him, heading back toward the carpark. 

Greg stared after him, and frowned. “You can just rock me to sleep tonight, you cheerful little nightmare.”

 

 

 

 


End file.
